My name is Jane and I am the creative half of Wylde Oake Artistry which is an inter-disciplinary practice born out of a life-long love of the natural world and the evolution of artistic development through both a BA Honours (Textiles) degree, and latterly, an MA in Fine Art (graduated autumn 2023).
My work currently seeks to explore and question our human perception of the fungal kingdom through its situating often within, but not exclusively,the Disrupted Realism movement. The distractions and disruption of contemporary life means I find peace within a quest to discover mycological secrets of the woodland floors as well as the urban jungles in which so many of us now live. My working process often incorporates photographic, or sketched, documentation, sound recordings and personal experiences that speak of physical interactions, of questioning the toxicity and taxonomy of fungi, and of close observation either within nature or within my studio thus creating pieces that are deeply personal and subjective renditions of the world in which we coexist. The resulting intricately worked soft pastel/pastel pencil, or occasionally mixed media, artworks vary from softly rendered botanical representations of fungal (mushrooms) forms through to their depiction within, and as a vital living part of, woodland or urban ecosystems . In addition conceptual imagery explores, and even blurs, the boundaries between nature and our human bodies as it seeks to create positive human-fungal connectivity and a sense of our place within the wider natural world.
Editing, curating and critiquing enables the continuing evolution of the work which has also led to an understanding that the work is also about how we can look towards a Mycocenic future in which we become companion species. If I consider the work in the present, in the moment, it also looks to speak and explore how we can become protectors of, rather than antagonists towards the fungal kingdom and its wider eco-systems - I seek to change, or remove the first question so often asked of "...is it edible?" and instead insert the words "what is it and what can we do for it?"